Kaliningrad will be challenged Klaipeda’s port

Russian Ministry of Transport chooses the site for deep-sea Kaliningrad port, named as the future of the Baltic Sea container center (HUB s). Last week Viktor Olersky Kaliningrad Special Deputy Minister of Transport of Russia visited several places of the future port. Decision on the specific location of the Russian Transport Ministry is scheduled for later this year.

Currently has been identified a number of possible massive port construction sites - Aistmares, Balga peninsula, the Baltic Sea to the port gate Baltijsk, in Primorsk Bay. ‘Kaliningrad is one of the best places to create the largest Russian container distribution hub’, assured Mr Olersky. The main advantage, why in Kaliningrad region, rather than somewhere in Russian Gulf of Finland is the fact that even on the coldest winter it would work without problems on the ice.

Kaliningrad Region Infrastructure Development Minister Alexander Rolbinov explained that the creation of a HUB, intercontinental ships will sail directly to the Kaliningrad region, where the land and the smaller feeder vessels sail cargo to other ports in the Baltic Sea. By building a deep-water container port in the Kaliningrad Region they would like it to be built in the car and railway network.

It is planned that the Kaliningrad region has as many as 12 million TEUs of annual capacity of the container terminal. Currently, the total amount of container in the Baltic Sea during the year is about 6 million TEUs, from their containers in Russia - about 2.5 million TEUs.

Investment in deep-water port, depending on location, will be from 236 to 314 billion rubles (about 25 billion litas). Even in Russia, this is a lot of money. The only real solution is to find powerful foreign companies, which invest in the construction of the port.

Container distribution center pretend to become the company ‘Klaipedos Smelte’. Currently, is converted the old fishing port, which almost all will become a container terminal. This terminal will become the world's second largest container company for transportation of MSC in the Baltic Sea. In essence, this means HUB.

Serious claims to become a container distribution centers where the containers are transported in smaller ships to other ports in the Baltic countries have Gothenburg (Sweden) and Gdansk in Poland, which is making a longer than 300 meters container ships. Ports of Tallinn and Riga also whish to become HUB.